


I'd Kill All My Darlings for You, My Love

by kasia



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Insomnia, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Steve Rogers is bi af, Thor's magic Asgardian vodka, lots of sappy kissing, non-graphic descriptions of past violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-04-09 09:45:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4343708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kasia/pseuds/kasia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I hate being drunk.”</p><p>Steve chuckled, raking his fingers through Bucky’s hair. Buck keened into his touch, needy and stupid. “Yeah, it wasn’t your best idea. Can I get you anything? You should probably drink some water.”</p><p>Bucky shook his head. “You wanna know something?” Bucky asked venomously, blinking. He settled into his seat and Steve crouched down beside him. “Shit they did to me, Zola and those fuckers? Shit they did didn’t hurt half as bad as watching you fall for Peggy.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'd Kill All My Darlings for You, My Love

**Author's Note:**

> I watched the Ant-Man post credits scene and was sad. This is what came of that and a playlist of nothing but sappy Lana Del Rey songs. Also, the working title of this fic was "story to make natalia cry", so. Dedicated for Natalia. I hope you like my gratuitous Steve/Bucky kisses.
> 
> This takes place post-Civil War, with Bucky being about a year into recovery.

He woke with a start, flat on his back, sticky with cold sweat. He did not remember falling asleep.

Bucky felt sick with the overwhelming sense that someone or something was in the bedroom with him. It was a long, paranoid minute before he could force himself to sit upright. When he did, his head swam, his clouded thoughts seemed to make the room spin. So much for being the peak human specimen.

The fear of the make-believe intruder faded as the drowsiness drained from his system. Now, Bucky was left with three stiff limbs and a taste in his mouth like something crawled into his throat and died there.

Now that he was awake, he was in a bad mood. Bucky dragged himself into the bathroom, ran the tap, splashed water into his face, brushed his teeth. He leaned over the basin with the water running, gobs of toothpaste dribbling off his lips to the drain. He made a face at himself in the mirror before switching off the water.

The Brooklyn loft housed two super soldiers and a pararescue officer working well above his pay grade. Steve and Sam had lived there together for months before they found Bucky, and when he moved in, Steve moved onto the couch. “You need the bed more than I do, Buck,” Steve had said with a gentle smile. The bed was not worth it, it was one more thing for Bucky to feel guilty about.

Bucky moved from the bedroom to the short hallway connecting to the kitchen, dining room, and living area. The couch where Steve slept was placed at an awkward angle against the wall to his right, he had placed it there. That way, it was out of view from the windows, and the wall was shared with the apartment next door, so Steve was out of range of any sniper worth their salt.

Bucky knew how he could make the shot, though, and that scared him most of all.

Steve was snoring softly. Bucky needed a drink. He stood in front of the fridge, deciding what he wanted. (Want was still a difficult concept; he needed water, but Steve and Sam responded positively when he expressed want for what was sometimes unnecessary. He liked when Steve and Sam were pleased with him.) He memorized the layout of the refrigerator’s contents, so he only had to open the door and flood the room with light when he had to.

Steve had stopped snoring. Bucky knew that meant he was awake, but did not want him to join him in the kitchen area, he wanted him to go back to sleep. Wanting was easy when it was about what made Steve happy. He eyed a small flask of Asgardian - well, Thor had equated it to Earth’s vodka - Asgardian vodka that Thor gifted to Steve for his birthday. If he drank that, the light in the fridge would not stir Steve. And, hell, maybe if the stuff worked on Steve, it’d do him in, too.

Bucky was going to do something stupid.

He grabbed the bottle and opened it. Immediately, the drink’s potent, acidic smell stung his nose. Bucky flared his nostrils. To hell with it.

He meant to only take a swig when he lifted the flask to his lips, but he downed the whole bottle. Bucky was not expecting it to go down as smoothly as it did. He expected it to be like the cheap whiskey he had vague memories of drinking with Steve somewhere in war-torn Europe, the kind that burned his throat. Instead, whatever Thor’s drink was, it was actually good.

Maybe, if it worked, if he could actually get buzzed, Bucky could fall back asleep without reliving Hydra before blacking out. Every night it was the same: lay in bed, too hot under the comforter, shaking uncontrollably as the ghost of Zola’s initial experiments took hold of him. The starvation, the sleep deprivation, the sensory overstimulation.

Once, somewhere in a lab in Siberia, Zola concocted a hallucinogen that made the tech vivisecting him look just like Steve. The doctor practically held all of Bucky’s intestines in his gloved hands - “You could have done better, Soldat,” Zola tsked from somewhere around his head as he thrashed. “You know better. Don’t fight. We might not be able to stitch you back up.” - and all Bucky saw when he looked up was Steve’s face, grinning down at him. God, he wished he would have just blacked out, but the serum made him too strong for that.

That was one of the most common nightmares to be relived.

Bucky fell into one of the arm chairs across the room, grasping the flask with his metal hand, rubbing himself through his boxers lazily with his flesh palm. Magic vodka of the gods, Bucky noted, also vague aphrodisiac.

He felt warm all over. He sat with his legs splayed, head lolled to one side, one arm slung over the arm of the chair with the flask dangling over the floor, the other resting on his stomach. The drink was setting in faster than he expected. Bucky sighed. The flask dropped from his fingers, clattering to the floor.

“Buck?” asked Steve groggily. “That you?” He sat up on the couch, facing Bucky, with his blanket pooled in his lap.

Bucky made a sleepy sounding noise in response. “Stevie,” he said without thinking.

“You okay?” Steve raised his eyebrows. Bucky could read his expression easily, even from across the room, even in the dark. Concern, possible amusement. “Are you drunk?”

His bad mood roiled again in his stomach. It made him feel hot where the drink was pleasantly warm. “So?” he snapped. He had even less of a filter when he was buzzed, he found, and when he was sober the filter was already slim-to-none.

“Did you mean to get drunk?” Steve pressed, well-meaning, but to Bucky it was just annoying.

“Meant to fall back asleep,” he slurred. “Y’know I can never sleep.”

“I thought Wanda helped with that.” Steve did not sound upset, and that’s what irritated Bucky most. Wanda had helped twice, maybe three times - Bucky would know for certain if his memory wasn’t so fucked up - and all she did was drain bad memories when they appeared so he could sleep. That’s how Steve explained it, anyway.

Bucky grumbled, lifting his head up off his shoulder. “So I can’t take any mind altering substances, but it’s okay to let the little witch mess around in my head?” he spat. “No antidepressants or shit, but using Wanda as a short- short-term solution is fine?” Even drunk, he could hear how bitter he sounded. Sober Bucky knew she only meant well. “Fuck that.” Why couldn’t he stop talking?

“It’s too soon for you to start on anything resembling what Hydra was giving you, you know that.” Steve’s eyes burned into him. “Sam and I found you still suffering withdrawal from continuous overdose a year after you got out. I just want what’s best for you, you know that.”

“Don’t wanna fight,” Bucky mumbled. He felt like running his mouth, he felt like telling Steve off. But Steve looked at him like that and oh, fuck. Bucky felt like dying. This was stupid. He wanted to kiss Steve, hard on the mouth, and then drop dead.

“Okay, then,” Steve agree, raising his hands in surrender. He glanced at the flask on the floor. “There any of that left?”

“No.” Bucky wished there were. Maybe a little more to drink of the stuff and he would not feel so wired, then he could fall asleep. Or not remember anything. Instead, he felt like he was burning and everything Hydra ever did to him was alive just beneath his skin. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay.”

“‘M sure Thor will bring you more, if you ask. Gotta new team to watch your back now, Stevie, don’t need me.” The last bit came out without Bucky realizing he’d said it. “Didn’t need me back then, either, not after you got big.”

“That’s not true,” said Steve lowly. Bucky detected his anger, and somehow that was pleasing to him. “You know it’s not true.”

“You joking?” slurred Bucky, throwing his head back against the chair again. Greasy strands of long hair fell over his eyes. He writhed in his seat, arching out of the chair, overcome with the desire to strangle the tech who Zola made look like Steve with his metal fist. “Hurts, Stevie.”

Steve was at his side instantly, hair mussed from sleep, eyes flickering in the dark. “Buck?” He placed two cool fingers under the bolt of Bucky’s jaw, feeling for his pulse. “You with me?”

Bucky gaped up at him, eyes screwed shut, mouth dry. “It’s like everything they did to me all at once,” he rasped. “I hate being drunk.”

Steve chuckled, raking his fingers through Bucky’s hair. Buck keened into his touch, needy and stupid. “Yeah, it wasn’t your best idea. Can I get you anything? You should probably drink some water.”

Bucky shook his head. “You wanna know something?” Bucky asked venomously, blinking. He settled into his seat and Steve crouched down beside him. “Shit they did to me, Zola and those fuckers? Shit they did didn’t hurt half as bad as watching you fall for Peggy.”

Steve stared at him. “Buck?”

“Not even Rumlow could come up with something half as bad as that, and he was pretty sick. Shoved one of those stun batons up my-”

“Bucky!”

He looked at Steve and felt like he wasn’t worth the dirt on the bottom of his shoes. “Doesn’t matter. You love her, not me.”

Everything was still present-tense to Bucky. It did not matter to him that Peggy Carter was in the ground. He sneered, “God, I still love you, though.”

Steve crept forward, leaning on his toes until his knees pressed into the side of the chair. “I’m sorry,” he murmured against Bucky’s temple. Bucky felt his heartbeat in his throat, in his fingertips. He felt so painfully alive. Alive and awake. Why hadn’t he stopped talking and just tried to sleep?

Next thing Bucky knew, Steve’s lips were touching his forehead. It took a split second to process that Steve was kissing him. Steve Rogers. Kissing him. Kissing his forehead. Bucky stopped breathing.

Steve kissed his lips. “Breathe,” he prompted. “You gotta stay with me, Buck.”

It felt like he was waking up. Bucky blinked, clearing his hazy vision, expecting Steve to disappear when he opened his eyes. It’d happened before, in his dreams. But those always ended with one of them dead. Bucky could not believe he was already awake.

“I’ll be right back,” promised Steve. Bucky watched him disappear across the apartment, to the kitchen, shamelessly admiring his ass. He listened to Steve open and shut cupboards, the clink of ice filling a glass, and running water.

“Thanks,” muttered Bucky, taking the glass from Steve when he reappeared. He gulped down the water quickly, most of it running down his chin, pooling at the collar of his t-shirt. The damp fabric clung to his hot skin. It felt nice. Sobering. He was still really, really drunk, though. “You gonna kiss me again?” He grinned sleepily. This was a good sign. “I’ve been pining after you for seventy years, I deserve it.”

Steve smiled. “Yeah, sure, you jerk.” He kissed him again on the lips. Bucky felt himself smiling through the whole thing.

“You gon’ kiss me in the mornin’ too?” drawled Bucky, low and Brooklyn, before yawning. Being an angry drunk had worn him out. “When ‘m not drunk?”

“You know this isn’t the first time we’ve kissed when you were drunk?” Steve remarked, slinging his arms around Bucky and hoisting him to his feet. He fell lopsidedly against Steve’s right side, metal arm trapped between them. “You came home in thirty-nine smelling like straight booze and tried to kiss me then. But you missed my mouth, so I had to hold you steady. Didn’t remember it in the morning, and I wasn’t about to bring it up.”

Bucky’s cheeks burned. He pressed his face against Steve’s rib cage. “Sorry, punk.” He pursed his lips. “‘M gonna remember this, though, for sure.”

“I’ll remind you if you don’t,” promised Steve, kissing the top of Bucky’s head. They fell into bed together, feet dangling over the edge of the mattress, with Bucky half-sprawled on top of Steve, face buried in the crook of Steve’s neck.

Steve was snoring soon, and Bucky was still awake, tracing lazy patterns into the meat of Steve’s shoulder. It was the first night he fell asleep just fine, though, and he chalked it up to Steve’s arms being wrapped around him. No bitterness, no nightmares.

Bucky fell asleep with Steve tangling his fingers in his hair.

xx

Bucky came too still pressed against Steve. It was an ordeal to keep his eyes open; he’d forgotten what it felt like to be hungover. Next time he saw Thor, he’d have to remember to tell him to stick a warning label on his presents.

“You still drunk?” rumbled Steve sleepily from beside him.

“Just hungover,” answered Bucky, trying not to feel too embarrassed about his drunk self.

“You need me to tell you what happened?” Steve asked, eyes still closed.

“Nah,” said Bucky coyly, pressing his luck. “You could show me though?”

Steve, half-asleep, kissed him so hard he nearly head-butted Bucky in the nose. “Love you, too, by the way. Always have,” he breathed against the corner of Bucky’s mouth before kissing him again.


End file.
